Chapel Hill’s Nightlight is possibly the area’s bets venue for a punk show. With no stage and low ceilings, it’s a simple venue that befits a small, engaging show. And Sunday night, it even had the right mix of sweat and booze mingling in the air to make it a welcome retreat from the falling snow outside.
Greensboro’s Resister–the loudest band of the night–opened. The most physically dynamic set of the night, it was also the most straight-forward and unapologetic punk band that set a good mood. Perhaps a bit too loud, what followed was even better.
Based in Charlotte, Yardwork delivers a punk esthetic with a more back country feel. With dueling drums, multiple guitarists and a multi-instrumentalist that played the trumpet and various percussion instruments, Yardwork is loud. They are in your face but it’s not angry. Just fun. The first time I saw them was at BCHQ in July after Les Savy Fav’s Nasher show and though the temperature was drastically different, the show was just as exciting. They started their with the upbeat “Cyndi” and took off from there. What makes this band so much fun to watch though, is that you feel like they are having fun playing with each other. It’s an unadulterated performance and they are unafraid to joke with one another and the audience. Their joy in making music radiates into the audience.
Finally, Des Ark (or rather, des_ark) finished the set. I was hoping for some interaction between Aimee Argote and the Yardwork boys, but nothing beyond conversation and playful joking. Nonetheless, Argote was as incredible as ever. She was backed by Evan Rowe and Noah Howard. Argote is remarkable when she plays acoustic, but Sunday’s show was excellent. She started playing alone and Rowe and Howard joined in. They were incredible tight in their sound and the new material only served as a reminder to how desperately I want her to record a new album.
And as good as the music is, it must be noted how enjoyable her shows are. When she is on stage, there is a sense of intimacy and engagement with the crowd that can only come from a show of that size. That’s not to say it was a crowd of 10–in fact, the venue was pretty full. But Argote is so personable on stage you feel she is just playing for you. It was just one of those shows you don’t want to end.
Not too many choices where this guy is going. Courtesy Starpulse.com
In this week’s edition of Pop Psychology, I want to highlight T.I.’s club anthem “Whatever You Like.” Aside from being a worthy chart-topper, the Atlanta rapper’s track highlights one of our culture’s biggest myths: that more choice is a good thing. While the idea that more choices are always the best alternative seems intuitively true, recent research has illustrated a beautiful irony – the more choices we have, the less likely we are to choose anything.
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Charles Tolliver
A few days before his Duke Performances- and Center for Documentary Studies-sponsored concert at New York’s Town Hall Thursday night, Charles Tolliver spoke with me about how the show had come about, the challenge of transcribing the scores and his memories of Monk’s 1959 Town Hall concert–er, well, I’ll let him tell it.
What was your introduction to Thelonious Monk? How did you discover him?
As a teenager, all of us kids who were into jazz, we were into all the guys including Thelonious Monk. He was one of our major listening guys.
You were at the Town Hall show in 1959. How old were you?
I guess I would have been not quite 17.
What was the vibe, and what do you remember about it?
To tell you the truth, I would not remember. I actually would not remember. We started trying to get into a lot of places. At a concert hall, you could get into that; the clubs were a little different because of the cabaret rules and the drinking rules. There actually was another place just around the corner where concerts were put on as well—the Fraternal Clubhouse. But both those places, as I understand, were created as houses where people could protest thing. I think Town Hall was created for that reason, not for concerts.
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Jason Moran
NEW YORK — Before his concert Friday at Town Hall, pianist Jason Moran took a few minutes to speak with me about his upcoming performance and how his In My Mind has changed since it was premiered at Duke.
What was your reaction to Charles Tolliver’s performance last night?
I thought last night was great. It’s a real accomplishment. I’m really happy to hear the music as it was, some of those same notes played. I guess some revisionist classical people would do something similar to this, perform a piece the way it would have been played, so it was nice to hear jazz classicized that way. I was also really happy to hear the liberties that the musicians were taking—Gene Jackson, Stanley Cowell. And also the way Charles—like, how he moves when he directs that music. It was really hip to see.
Does that success make tonight high pressure?
I’m not even so worried, because it’s a difference of recreation as opposed to reaction. In My Mind is kind of a reaction to Monk at Town Hall, and it just shows how I think about Monk, his history as an African American, him as a piano legend, how he’s affected me.
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Thelonious Monk
NEW YORK — Greetings from the Big Apple, where I’m covering celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Thelonious Monk’s legendary 1959 Town Hall tentet show, (for background on the projects and these two shows, read this and this and this).
Last night’s show was the Charles Tolliver Tentet playing note-for-note transcriptions from the Monk show, which was Feb. 28, 1959. Tolliver’s star rose quickly in the late ’60s, but he doesn’t have the same profile of some other musicians of his vintage. Perhaps he deserves more–last night he led a fiercely intense (and star-studded) band through energetic readings of the charts, elecrtifying an equally energetic (and star-studded) audience.
Tolliver premiered the transcriptions at Duke last fall, and that show, while interesting, showed a certain roughness around the edges, and was outshone by some of the other shows in Duke Performances’ “Following Monk” series. For the New York show, everything worked better, and the show struck a balance between excitement–as judged by the occasional shouts from the house–and solemnity, with many attendees speaking about the spooky, chilling magic in the air.
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